The newly established Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in
South Dakota will be the first park site devoted entirely to the story
of the Cold War.

MOST BABY BOOMERS who grew up with the Cold War would just as soon
forget the air raid drills, fallout shelters, and doomsday scenarios
brought on by events like the Cuban missile crisis. But those 40 or so
years of nose-to-nose brinksmanship with the former Soviet Union
represent a significant era in U.S. history--one that many historians
believe deserves recognition in the National Park System.

Now that is about to happen, thanks to an unusual combination of
events and a cast of characters ranging from international diplomats to
a 16-year-old boy in rural South Dakota. On November 29, 1999, President
Clinton signed legislation creating the Minuteman Missile National
Historic Site adjacent to Badlands National Park in southwestern South
Dakota. According to that law, the purpose of the site is "to
preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit and enjoyment of
present and future generations the structures associated with the
Minuteman II missile defense system" and to interpret the
historical role of that system "as a key component of
America's strategic commitment to preserve world peace, and in the
broader context of the Cold War." When the facility opens to the
public in five years, it will be the first national historic site
devoted entirely to the story of the Cold War.

During the 1960s, when tensions peaked between the United States
and the Soviet Union, 1,000 Minuteman missiles were deployed throughout
the sparsely populated states of the upper Midwest, poised to strike
Russian targets within 30 minutes or less. In 100 launch control
facilities, each linked to ten missile silos, two officers stood watch
in reinforced bunkers 30 feet below ground to await the unthinkable:
orders from the president to launch a nuclear attack.

That era ended in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union when
President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which ordered that all
Minuteman II missiles be destroyed by the end of 2001.

Irv Mortenson, then superintendent of Badlands National Park,
recalls how the Air Force's efforts to deactivate the missiles
filled the local news. "We were watching the TV, and my 16-year-old
son, Brian, who at that time was enamored of missiles and rockets, said,
`You know, Dad, the Park Service ought to be working to set aside one of
those things.'" As luck would have it, the framers of START
had had similar foresight, including in the treaty a provision allowing
for preservation of "one static display" of a Minuteman
missile.

Recognizing that his son's suggestion had merit, Mortenson
contacted the state historic preservation office, the South Dakota
congressional delegation, and historian Greg Kendrick in the National
Park Service's Denver office. "At that point, no one, even in
the Air Force, considered these missile sites historic," says
Kendrick. "But we convinced the Air Force that we needed at least a
graphic record for posterity, so we brought in a team of architects,
historians, and photographers to produce detailed drawings and
photographs." The graphics sparked further interest in actually
saving part of the complex as a tourist attraction.

NPCA's Heartland Regional Director, Lori Nelson, also believed
the proposal had merit, and testified before Congress in favor of a
park. "The park fills a unique niche commemorating a nationally
significant period in our country's history ... no other site would
do that," Nelson says.

With funding from a Defense Department program designed to preserve
the history of the armed forces, the Park Service launched a study,
directed by Kendrick, to determine the feasibility of creating a
national historic site around the launch control facility of the Delta
missile wing (known as Delta 1) and one of the ten missiles attached to
it (Delta 9). The study concluded that these were indeed most worthy of
preservation for three reasons:

* Delta 1 and 9 have the most historical integrity of all Minuteman
sites because they were the least changed from their original 1961
configuration.

* They are within a mile of Interstate 90, the main tourist route
from the Midwest to Yellowstone. Most of the other missile sites are
remote, reachable only by gravel road or by crossing private land.

* They are only about seven miles from Badlands National Park, so
administrative functions can be shared initially, saving the taxpayers
money.

With the selection of Delta 1 and 9 confirmed, all other missiles
in the Delta wing were disarmed and imploded by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers in the mid-1990s. The piles of rubble were left untouched for
up to a year so that Russian satellites could verify that the missiles
had indeed been destroyed, as required by START.

Now that Congress has authorized establishment of a national
historic site, the National Park Service (NPS) over the next three years
will develop a general management plan to determine the best way to
manage the flow of visitors and to interpret the missile complex's
role in the Cold War. So far, there is no actual budget for the site,
but Marianne Mills, chief of resource education at Badlands and
currently site manager for the Minuteman, has requested a base budget of
$750,000 for initial staffing.

Before the site opens to the public, the Park Service will
construct a visitor center and parking areas, but for now the area is
mostly empty prairie. "The launch control facility was designed to
blend into the landscape, so it looks like a plain, tan ranch house with
a lot of strange yard art," Mills explains. "There's a
chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and in the open area in front
of the building there are several microwave receivers, all sorts of
radio equipment, a burn bin where they burned the orders each day, some
physical fitness equipment, and storage for trucks and a lawn mower. All
that will stay." Inside, everything looks as if the military
personnel just walked out--right down to the magazines, videos, and
other minutiae of daffy life. Only items susceptible to theft, such as
TVs and VCRs have been removed. An Air Force engineer checks the
property at least once a month, and Mills has installed equipment to
monitor temperature and humidity.

The heart of the operation is out of sight below ground. At Delta
1, an elevator connects the support building with the 12 by 28-foot
capsule that was manned around the clock by the two launch control
officers. (Just like in the movies, they had two red keys that they
would have had to insert simultaneously in their consoles to initiate a
launch, and each was armed as a check against one deciding to act
alone.) It is unlikely that such a confined space can be made accessible
to large numbers of visitors, Mills says, so much of the below-ground
story may be told at the visitor center. There is also a launch control
simulator at nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base that is open to the public.

At the Delta 9 missile silo, the only visible evidence is a
concrete slab surrounded by chain link and barbed wire. The silo is
capped with an 80-ton, reinforced concrete door that in the event of a
missile launch would have been blown off with explosives. "Under
the treaty, the Air Force has to uncork the silo and open it up so the
Russians can peek inside on a satellite pass and confirm that there
really isn't a missile down in the hole," says Mortenson. So,
to accommodate both the Russians and the public, the massive door will
be welded into a partially open position and the hole capped with a
transparent cover to allow visibility while protecting the silo from the
weather. Once the silo modification is complete and the site has been
officially cleared under START, the Air Force will turn over the
property to the National Park Service, likely to be sometime in 2001.

"From the Park Service's standpoint, this is probably the
first time we've ever had a near complete historic assemblage of
what was there when a site was in operation," notes Mortenson.
"Most military history sites were stripped and dismembered, and
it's very difficult to envision what they looked like unless
somebody has the time, the money, and the expertise to reconstruct what
was there."

To complete the story, the Minuteman visitor center will house a
museum containing objects and reminiscences related specifically to the
Delta missile site and to the era it represents. "I'll be
contacting Sears and Roebuck, because they sold through their catalog
ready-made bomb shelters and bomb shelter kits, and that's
something we want to include in our collection," Mills says. The
aim at the center will be to cover the entire scope of the Cold War,
including McCarthyism, the Cuban missile crisis, and to some extent the
Korean and Vietnam conflicts. "It all has to be put in
context," Mills adds, "because the Minuteman missile system
certainly didn't exist in a vacuum."

Although Minuteman will be the only site within the park system
devoted exclusively to the Cold War, it is by no means the only one with
connections to that era. Nike missile sites are among the attractions at
two NPS units: Marin Headlands at San Francisco's Golden Gate
National Recreation Area, where visitors can watch the missile ascend
from its silo and hear interpretive talks by knowledgeable volunteers;
and Gateway National Recreation Area at the entrance to New York City harbor, where wayside markers at Forts Tilden and Hancock describe the
role of the Nike in coastal defenses. Another early missile, the Titan,
is featured at a privately owned site in Arizona.

A number of military sites associated with the Cold War also have
been designated national historic landmarks or listed on the National
Register of Historic Places (both administered by the Park Service),
which means that they are historically significant but not necessarily
owned by the federal government or open to the public.

These include the Thor missile launch site at Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California; the Army's launch complex 33 at the White Sands
Missile Range in New Mexico, where Wernher von Braun and his team
perfected the V-2 rocket after World War II; the world's first
nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, now docked at Groton,
Connecticut; and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the
world's first atomic bomb was perfected, and the Trinity site,
where it was successfully detonated on June 16, 1945, both in New
Mexico. Congress may well designate some of these as national historic
sites once they are no longer part of active defense installations.

Civilian sites on the landmark or register list include a civil
defense emergency operations center in Jefferson County, Colorado; Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, site of the world's oldest
nuclear reactor; and the Atomic Energy Commission's National
Engineering Lab in Idaho, which houses the first nuclear reactor to
produce a usable amount of electricity for peacetime use.

Political aspects of the Cold War also come into play at a range of
sites and landmarks, including the Eisenhower National Historic Site at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Ike conferred with Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev, and Westminster College Gymnasium, a national historic
landmark, where Winston Churchill made his famous iron curtain speech.
One of the most unusual landmarks is the pumpkin patch in Westminster,
Maryland, made famous during the Alger Hiss case of 1948-49. It was from
a hollowed-out pumpkin on his farm that former
Communist-turned-conservative Whittaker Chambers retrieved documents
that he claimed State Department official Hiss had given him to pass on
to a Soviet agent. On the basis of the pumpkin patch evidence and
Chambers' testimony, Hiss was convicted and sent to prison. The
case propelled California Congressman Richard Nixon into national
prominence and laid the groundwork for Sen. Joseph McCarthy's
Communist witch-hunt, which started shortly thereafter. The Chambers
farm is still privately owned and is not open to the public.

So far, Congress has not authorized the National Park Service to
conduct a "theme" study to identify sites related to the Cold
War, as it has for other aspects of American history, such as civil
rights, the women's movement, and the space program. But with the
establishment of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, the Cold
War is taking its rightful place in the nation's heritage.
"This could well serve for some years as the only site for a full
interpretation of that era, until we see how the public reacts, what
political controversies arise, and how difficult it is to write
objective material," notes Robin Winks, professor of history at
Yale and a member of the board of trustees of the National Parks
Conservation Association. "But over time the nation will likely
decide that dealing with the fear of nuclear attack at just this one
site is not sufficient for something that has been so powerfully
important in American life."

In the meantime, says Marianne Mills, the Park Service is
determined to present the Minuteman site in the context of hope for the
future. "We want to focus not just on `might makes right' and
what we can do with power and technology but rather on the wisdom of
humanity that these weapons were never used," she says. "This
really is more of a world peace site than one devoted to military
might."

PHYLLIS MCINTOSH, who lives in the Washington, D.C. area, last
wrote for National Parks about the challenges of conserving historic
artifacts.

COPYRIGHT 2000 National Parks Conservation Association
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